Understanding space as “an arena of social action” (2), Amanda Flather's new book explores the different ways that men and women in early modern Essex experienced space and the ways in which space informed and shaped the construction of gender. In gendering space, she is interested in more than just what activities took place where but how men and women used spaces differently. Informed by the theoretical discussions of such scholars as Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, Flather seeks to go beyond simple dichotomies of public and private and the so-called rise of separate spheres to an understanding of how space figures in the organization of power between the sexes. Flather is also interested in how the action and behavior of men and women compare with the extensive prescriptive literature on the use of space. Flather argues that although there is a relationship between prescription and action, the relationship is by no means direct or straightforward. Men and women ignored, accepted, or manipulated their use of space relative to others around them and their own marital and social status. Although prescriptive literature had an impact on how and where men and women interacted, it was not the sole determining influence on their behavior.

Flather's research focuses on the county of Essex during the long seventeenth century, from 1580 to 1720. Essex offers a variety of advantages; most notable are its rich archival sources. There are abundant court depositions from all jurisdictions for the period. Moreover, Essex's dominance in the cloth trade combined with its proximity to London and its cultural and intellectual influence are well known and understood, allowing Flather to build on this rich historiographic material.

Flather divides her book into five chapters. In the first chapter she explores the prescriptive literature of the period and argues that clerics and other moralists sought to enforce a “patriarchal spatial ideology” predicated on what historians have come to understand as the public and the private. According to Protestant moralists, women belonged indoors, in the home attending to domestic concerns, while men were outside in the world. Yet, these ideas were by no means as clear-cut as we might think. Flather identifies numerous contradictions as moralists try to combine their notions of women's space with Christian charity and good neighborliness. Thus the very idea of a patriarchal spatial ideology breaks down under scrutiny.

In the remaining four chapters Flather examines different kinds of spaces, particularly domestic, labor, social, and religious, exploring how men and women interacted and used these places. Her evidence comes from the descriptions of places and actions found in depositions, often incidental information provided by witnesses in the course of their testimony. Houses, Flather argued, were places of control, against subordinate inferiors, invading outsiders, or even peaceful strangers. Both men and women sought to protect and control their households. Within the house, Flather found no clear-cut gender segregation of space—houses by and large were too small—but social and gender hierarchies between husbands and wives; parents and children; and masters, mistresses, and servants and apprentices were still maintained in how individuals used the household space, particularly in eating and sleeping arrangements. Work spaces were similarly not segregated, although men tended to work in greater isolation than women, and their tasks and interactions changed with the seasons and according to the wealth of individuals. Social spaces were similarly in flux. Taverns, streets, and marketplaces were frequented by both men and women, but the propriety of visiting them depended on the time of day and social status of the individual, as much as gender and life cycle. While moralists worried about women going to taverns and pubs, some were more respectable than others, and young and single women found them less detrimental to their reputations than married women. Finally, church seating arrangements segregated the sexes but also defined the congregation by social status and wealth. Seating arrangements, Flather argues, were intended to reproduce “divinely ordained inequality but also neighbourly reciprocity, of enduring hierarchy but also harmony” (136). However, individuals were willing to challenge their place in this “divine order” through pew disputes if they felt aggrieved by how the community had placed them.

Flather offers interesting information on how early modern men and women moved through their physical world, re-creating and challenging the moral and social expectations created by proscriptive literature. Her material is vivid, and the range of available legal jurisdictions allows Flather to explore a variety of physical places and contexts with richness and nuance. I wish, however, she had integrated better her theoretical discussion, as outlined in her introduction, with her data to make her conclusions more apparent. Although her use of seventeenth-century prescriptive literature to uncover an early modern spatial ideology is predicated on the assumption that it is a Protestant ideology and, therefore, a change from the medieval (and Catholic) past, Flather does not make overt claims about changes or continuities in the use of space or its relationship to early modern gender and religious ideologies. Moreover medievalists such as John Schofield, Felicity Riddy, Shannon McSheffrey, and Barbara Hanawalt have all uncovered the same practices, ideologies, and behaviors in medieval England, which begs the questions of the impact of early modern religious and economic changes on the construction of early modern gender.